^&^%. 


E.S.    Buchanan 


9^: 


The  Search   for  the  Orifrinal  Words 
of  the  Cros^^ei 


'mar    16  1960  ^' 


BS2.385 


The  Search  for  the  Original 
Words  of  the  Gospel 


/^Lecture  delivered  by 
E.  S.  BUCHANAN,  M.  A.,  B.  Sc, 

Editor  of 

OXFORD  OLD  LATIN  BIBLICAL  TEXTS,  No8.  V  and  VI; 

SACRED  LATIN  TEXTS,  Nos.  I,  II  and  III; 

THE  RECORDS  UNROLLED; 

AN  ENGLISH  VERSION   OF  THE  IRISH   GOSPELS;  etc. 


AT  UNION  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

New   York 

on 

Thursday,  December  3d,  1914 


The  Search  for  the  Original 
Words  of  the  Gospel 


MAR    6  1916 


A- 


/Lecture  delivered    by 
E.  S.  BUCHANAN,  M.  A.,  B.  Sc, 

Editor  of 

OXFORD   OLD   LATIN   BIBLICAL   TEXTS,   Nos.  VandVI; 

SACRED   LATIN   TEXTS,   Nos.  I,  II  and  III; 

THE    RECORDS   UNROLLED; 

AN   ENGLISH   VERSION   OE   THE    IRISH    GOSPELS;    etc. 


AT   UNION  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

New   York 

on 

Thursday,  December  3d,  1914 


>^^ 


Gopyrifiht,    1914 

by 

E.    S.    BUCHANAN 


Extra  cupies  of  this  Lecture  may  be  obtained  from 
the  Paget  Literary  Agency,  36  Weal  46th  Street, 
New  York. 

PRICE  25c  PER  COPY   POSTPAID 

Enclose  remittance  with  order 


'The  Search  for  the  Original 
Words  of  the  Gospel" 

by 

E.  S.  Buchanan,  M.A.,  B.Sc, 


At  the  Union  Theological  Seminary,  Broadway  and    120th 

Street,  New  York  City,  at  5  p.  m., 

December  3d,  1914 

President  Brown  in  the  Chair. 

THE  CHAIRMAN :  There  is  no  subject  more  inter- 
esting to  intelligent  Christian  people  than  that  of  the 
endeavor  to  get  behind  our  earliest  manuscripts  of  the 
Bible,  and  especially  the  New  Testament,  and  recon- 
struct, as  far  as  possible,  the  originals,  as  they  were 
first  written  down.  We  have  with  us  this  afternoon 
one  of  the  experts  in  this  pursuit,  in  this  country  for  a 
time,  and  able  therefore  to  our  great  satisfaction  to 
give  us  to-day,  and  report  from  his  own  original  obser- 
vations and  work  what  results,  as  to  the  Gospels,  it 
seems  to  him  possible  to  announce  at  the  present  time. 
I  have  much  pleasure  in  introducing  the  Rev.  E.  S. 
Buchanan  of  Oxford. 


REV.  E.  S.  BUCHANAN :  Mr.  President,  ladies  and 
gentlemen,  I  do  not  propose  this  afternoon  to  be  at  all 
formal.  As  far  as  I  can  I  wish  to  speak  in  a  simple, 
humble  and  direct  manner,  and  I  wish  to  give,  as  far 
as  possible,  not  other  men's  discoveries,  but  what  I 
have  myself  seen,  what  I  have  myself  been  so  fortunate 
as  to  discover,  and  what  I  think  this  audience  will 
be  the  first  public  audience  in  the  world  to  hear. 

I  may  be  pardoned  as  a  visitor  to  this  great  country 
if  I  say  a  few  words  about  myself,  not  that  I  wish  to 
make  myself  in  any  way  the  object  of  this  talk,  but  I 
think  the  experience  of  my  own  mind  under  the  his- 
torical discoveries,  and  especially  the  textual  discov- 
eries which  came  to  me,  may  be  of  interest.  I  had  the 
very  great  privilege  of  being  associated  with  Bishop 
John  Wordsworth  of  Salisbury.  It  was  owing  to  him 
that  I  entered  the  ministry  of  the  Church  of  England, 
and  as  long  as  he  was  living  I  had  a  friend  and  a 
patron,  and  one  who  encouraged  me,  and  who  was  al- 
ways kindly,  and  placed  his  knowledge  and  his  friend- 
ship, and  in  some  cases  his  money,  at  my  service. 

When  in  the  summer  of  1911,  he  died  quite  suddenly, 
so  suddenly  that  one  afternoon  after  saying  he  felt  a 
little  tired,  he  laid  down  on  the  sofa  in  his  palace  at 
Salisbury,  and  died,  it  was  a  great  shock  to  many  be- 
side myself.  I  felt  that  I  had  lost  the  one  man  in 
Europe  who  had  really  started  me  on  this  work,  and 
had  helped  me  and  supported  me.  I  turned  to  some 
of  the  other  Bishops  in  the  English  Church,  and  I 
found  them — I  was  going  to  say  like  ice-bergs — per- 
haps that  would  be  the  most  vivid  description.  They 
thought  that  the  work  was  a  specialist's  work,  and  had 
no  direct  bearing  or  value  upon  church  questions. 

Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  wish  to  say  that  it  is  my 
profound  conviction  that  before  we  can  arrive  at  any 
estimate  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ,  we  must  have 


the  exact  words,  as  far  as  we  can,  that  He  spoke.  Now, 
there  have  been  a  great  many  very  conflicting  views 
as  to  the  state  of  the  Gospels  or  the  state  of  our  New 
Testament.  I  am  going  to  speak  on  the  New  Testa- 
ment only.  We  know  that  if  we  look  into  the  past 
history  of  the  world,  there  was  a  tremendous  struggle 
in  the  Middle  Ages  for  liberty.  The  human  spirit 
was  gradually  entangled  in  a  net  work  of  ecclesiastical 
traps,  stratagems,  teachings  and  systems  which 
squeezed  all  the  spiritual  heart-blood  out  of  it.  That 
state  of  things  continued,  we  might  say,  in  England 
from  the  time  of  the  Norman  Conquest  until  the  time 
of  Wycliffe.  John  Wycliffe  began  to  see  that  if  ever 
his  countrymen  were  to  be  set  free  from  a  cruel  dom- 
ination he  would  have  to  translate  the  Scripture  into 
his  mother  tongue. 

Wycliffe  was  the  first  and  perhaps  the  greatest  of 
our  English  reformers;  and  he  translated  in  1380 
from  the  Latin  Vulgate  the  whole  New  Testament.  Of 
course,  printing  had  not  yet  come  in.  We  today  can- 
not imagine  the  world  without  printing.  It  is  very 
hard  for  us  to  reconstruct  those  centuries  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  when  men  lived  without  the  printing  press, 
and  when  they  lived  very  much  at  the  mercy  of  the 
few  people  who  had  privileges,  and  especially  the 
ecclesiastics.  Ecclesiastics  ruled  the  world;  they  ex- 
empted themselves  from  all  penalties,,  and  they  im- 
posed fines  and  penalties  ad  libitum  upon  the  other 
people  whom  they  called  the  laity. 

Of  all  the  tyrannies  that  we  have  ever  read  of,  the 
ecclesiastical  tyranny  of  the  Dark  Ages  has  been  the 
worst.  It  was  not  until  the  Scriptures  came  to  be 
put  in  the  hands  of  the  people,  that  they  saw  that 
this  ecclesiastical  tyranny,  which  was  chained  upon 
them  or  riveted  upon  them  in  the  name  of  God  and 


5 


of  Christ,  was  really  a  misrepresentation  of  the  teach- 
ing of  Christ, 

Following  Wycliffe,  the  great  name,  the  name  that 
shook  all  Europe,  and  that  still  shakes  Europe  to-day, 
to  those  who  earnestly  read  him,  was  Martin  Luther. 
I  may  say  that  spiritually  I  owe  more  to  Martin 
Luther  than  to  any  of  my  own  countrymen,  and  am 
under  a  greater  debt  to  him  for  his  bravery,  for  his 
courage,  for  his  truth,  for  his  humanity,  and  for  his 
total  absence  of  all  hypocrisy.  If  you  ask  me  what 
was  the  grand  thing  about  Martin  Luther,  it  was  that 
the  man  had  not  a  line,  not  a  trace  of  hypocrisy  in  his 
whole  composition.  I  think  that  can  scarcely  be  said 
truly  of  any  other  great  ecclesiastic,  but  Martin  Luther 
was  a  Christian  and  a  man — a  very  great  man,  who 
brought  Europe  face  to  face  with  this  question,  "Are 
we  to  follow  this  ecclesiastical  system,  this  man-made 
system,  of  which  the  Pope  is  the  head,  or  are  we  boldly 
and  resolutely  to  throw  ourselves  upon  God?  Are  we 
still  to  crave  these  human  mediators,  or  are  we  to  say, 
"God  has  given  me  enought  light  by  His  Word  and  by 
His  Spirit,  and,  therefore,  I  can  dispense  with  this 
system." 

Martin  Luther's  work  crossed  over  to  England,  and 
was  powerful  in  such  men  as  William  Tyndale.  I  do 
not  know  whether  you  know  it  or  not,  but  it  is  a  fact 
that  our  English  Bible,  King  James'  Bible,  which  was 
issued  in  1611,  is  practically  the  translation  of  Wil- 
liam Tyndale,  five-sixths  of  its  renderings  are  those 
of  William  Tyndale.  William  Tyndale  produced  his 
first  New  Testament  in  1525,  and  in  1536  he  was 
strangled  and  burnt  for  having  dared  to  do  such  a 
monstrous  act.  But  although  they  burnt  him,  they 
could  not  burn  his  books ;  and  it  is  owing  to  him,  more 
than  to  any  man,  that  our  English  Bible  which  has 


been  such  a  power  in  the  English  speaking  race,  has 
its  poetry  and  pathos  and  spiritual  charm. 

Tyndale  completed  the  work  of  Wycliffe,  and  he  did 
it  by  the  aid  of  the  printing  press,  for  whereas  Wy- 
cliffe could  only  produce  some  thirty  copies  altogether, 
Tyndale  in  his  first  edition  struck  off  4,000,  but  his 
enemies  succeeded  in  destroying  3,999  out  of  those 
4,000,  and  only  one  solitary  copy  has  survived;  then 
he  struck  off  another  4,000,  and  of  those  I  have  seen 
in  the  British  Museum  several  copies  that  survive,  and 
there  are  two  in  New  York  and  more  elsewhere. 

As  long  as  men  could  only  write  books,  all  manu- 
script books  could  only  be  limited  in  number,  and  the 
ecclesiastical  powers  could  hunt  those  down ;  but  when 
the  printing  press  threw  out  thousands,  it  was  im- 
possible to  stop  them  and  impossible  to  burn  them. 
William  Tyndale's  work  was  completed  by  the  preach- 
ing of  the  Reformers,  and  the  weapon  of  the  Reforma- 
tion was  an  appeal  to  the  Word  of  God,  an  appeal  from 
the  teaching  of  man  to  the  teaching  of  God's  Word. 
That  appeal  may  seem  to  us  the  final  step  in  the  eman- 
cipation of  the  human  spirit,  and  we  may  think  that 
all  we  have  to  do  to-day  is  to  carry  forward  the  work 
of  the  Reformation.  But  we  are  face  to  face  today 
with  another  problem,  which  does  not  seem  to  have 
ever  entered  the  heads  of  the  Reformers.  This  Word 
of  God  has  been  made  into  a  dead  legal  code.  Men's 
souls  have  been  put  under  it;  and  their  own  aspira- 
tions, and  their  own  instincts,  and  their  own  power 
of  love  and  hope  have  been  crushed  by  this  unalter- 
able code  into  which  the  Bible  has  been  made. 

I  was  brought  up  by  my  father  to  believe  that  every 
word  in  the  English  Bible  was  inspired  by  the  Spirit 
of  the  living  God.  There  was  not  one  word  in  it  but 
had  the  power  and  authority  of  God  behind  it.  I  dared 
not  question  one  of  the  Bible  texts  lest  I  should  go 


into  "everlasting  torture."  I  heard  my  father  say  with 
his  knowledge  of  Greek  that  the  word  translated 
"punishment"  was  really  "torture" ;  and  he  taught  his 
family,  he  taught  his  neighbors,  that  God  had  pre- 
pared for  those  who  were  reprobate  an  eternal  tor- 
ture. Whatever  seemed  to  crush  his  spirit  when  he 
thought  it,  he  always  escaped  from  by  saying  that 
God  was  greater  than  we  were,  that  we  must  not 
measure  the  mind  and  the  love  of  God  by  our  own 
imperfect  and  fallen  and  corrupt  natures.  And  yet 
I  used  as  a  boy  to  be  dissatisfied  with  this  teaching 
which  made  God  so  stern  and  so  terrible,  which  made 
him  so  vindictive,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  to  paint 
God  as  having  prepared  an  eternal  torture  for  mil- 
lions of  his  creatures,  was  to  make  him  a  God  from 
whom  men  must  shrink. 

This  Calvinistic  code  continued,  and  my  father  be- 
lieved it  up  to  his  death,  held  through  everything  to 
the  belief  that  God  was  all,  God's  Word  was  all;  our 
life  here  nothing;  our  human  intellect  benighted;  our 
human  nature  corrupt;  and  that  our  only  hope  was 
an  acquiescence,  a  complete  acquiescence  in  the  eternal 
will  of  God. 

"Jacob  have  I  loved" — I  have  often  heard  him  say — 
"Jacob  have  I  loved  and  Esau  have  I  hated."  God's 
ways  were  that  some  people  He  loved  and  elected  to 
eternal  life;  but  others  for  some  inscrutable  reason 
God  hated  and  chose  to  reprobate  and  condemn  to 
eternal  loss.  And  the  conclusion  of  it  was  this,  If  I 
did  not  believe  this  system,  then  I  should  go  into 
eternal  torment,  because  my  non-believing  it  would 
prove  that  I  was  a  reprobate. 

That  was  the  teaching  which  followed  in  the  wake  of 
the  Reformation,  and  erected  the  Bible,  or  the  Word 
of  God  as  it  defined  it,  into  a  hard  and  terrible  system, 
and  then  brought  that  system  with  all  the  force  of  the 

8 


lawyer  and  logician  to  bear  upon  the  human  mind 
and  the  human  understanding. 

When  I  met  the  Bishop  of  Salisbury  and  told  him 
that  the  Calvinistic  faith  was  such  that  I  could  not 
accept  it,  and  that  rather  than  believe  it  I  would  have 
no  outward  religion  at  all,  he  said  to  me  that  he  him- 
self was  just  as  much  opposed  to  all  such  teaching, 
and  that  Calvinism  had  by  its  interpreters  inflicted  a 
deep  wound  on  the  Church  of  England;  and  he  as- 
sured me  that  it  was  folly  to  speak  of  every  word  of 
the  Scripture  as  being  fixed.  He  added,  "In  my  edi- 
tion which  I  am  bringing  out  of  the  Vulgate,  I  have 
already  collected  thousands  of  variant  readings,  and 
this  very  reading  which  you  tell  me  about,  'These  shall 
go  into  the  eternal  torture,'  you  will  find  it  in  the 
oldest  Latin  manuscripts,  as  'These  shall  go  into  the 
eternal  fire.'  "  Immediately  I  saw  that  there  was  an 
escape.  He  said  to  me,  "Here  is  the  facsimile  of 
Codex  Sinaiticus,  edited  by  Tischendorf,  which  be- 
longed to  my  father.  Here  is  the  Codex  Bzae,  a  copy 
of  the  Graeco-Latin  Gospels."  And  he  placed  them 
in  my  hands. 

You  can  imagine  the  enthusiasm  kindled  in  me  as 
a  young  man  eighteen  years  ago.  I  went  back  to  my 
college  room  and  thought  to  myself,  "Here  is  a  man 
of  God  who  can  deliver  me  from  this  death."  For  I 
had  been  brought  up  very  seriously,  and  my  nature 
had  been  so  stamped  by  the  personality  of  my  father 
and  his  religion,  that  I  felt  myself  unable  to  deliver 
myself  from  it. 

I  believe  it  is  possible  to  take  a  child  and  to  impress 
such  a  sombre  coloring  upon  that  child's  nature,  to 
make  hell  so  vivid  to  that  child,  and  God  so  terrible, 
that  it  will  take  years  to  erase  the  impression  that 
you  will  make  on  that  child's  mind.  Therefore  I  say, 
let  us  be  careful  how  we  teach  children. 

9 


I  owe  a  great  debt  to  Bishop  Wordsworth.  It  was 
through  him  that  I  joined  the  number  of  young  men 
associated  with  him  in  textual  study,  and  since  that 
time  I  have  pursued,  always  with  supreme  interest, 
this  one  quest,  to  find  out  what  was  really  written; 
that  I  might  thereby  find  an  escape  from  some  of 
these  dogmas,  from  some  of  these  teachings,  which 
had  weighed  so  heavily  upon  me;  that  I  might  dis- 
cover for  myself  whether  Christ  ever  said  some  of 
the  words  attributed  to  Him  or  not.  I  say  the  prob- 
lem now  before  us  is  this. 

Here  I  will  anticipate  a  little  and  confess  that  I 
have  come  now  to  believe  myself,  and  to  knoiu  myself, 
that  the  text  of  the  New  Testament  has  been  more  or 
less  revised  since  it  left  the  hands  of  the  original 
writers.  I  do  not  mean  that  new  miracles  have  been 
added  or  new  parables  have  been  added,  I  do  not  mean 
that ;  but  I  believe  and  am  sure  that  eyes  behind  which 
was  an  ecclesiastical  brain — if  you  know  what  an 
ecclesiastical  brain  is — went  over  the  Gospel  manu- 
scripts in  the  2d  century,  and  altered  a  good  many 
verses  to  bring  them  into  conformity  with  the 
schemes  and  ideals  of  the  hierarchy  which  had  al- 
ready begun  to  develop.  For  example,  when  I  was 
taught  at  Salisbury  Theological  College,  I  was  taught 
the  necessity  (for  salvation)  of  baptism  by  water; 
and  the  text  was,  "Except  a  man  be  born  of  water 
and  the  Spirit  he  cannot  enter  into  the  Kingdom  of 
God." 

When  the  Sinai  Syriac  Palimpsest  was  discovered 
in  1892,  to  our  astonishment  we  saw  that  in  that  man- 
uscript the  words  were,  "Except  a  man  be  born  of  the 
Spirit  and  of  water — "  the  cart  had  been  put  be- 
fore the  horse,  or  vice  versa — ."  That  made  some  of  us 
think;  and  now  there  is  a  Latin  manuscript  which  I 
have  just  edited  in  the  British    Museum,    that    was 

10 


copied  in  Armagh  in  Ireland,  and  that  has  got  this 
reading  first-hand:  "Except  a  man  be  born  of  the 
Spirit"  (leaving  out  water)  "he  cannot  enter  into  the 
Kingdom  of  God." 

Bishop  Wordsworth,  although  a  great  man,  allowed 
the  practice  of  confession.  The  doctrine  of  confes- 
sion is  based  on  our  Lord's  words,  "Tell  it  to  the 
Church,  if  thou  has  aught  against  thy  brother."  And 
also  there  is  that  verse  in  St.  James'  Epistle  where 
we  have  to  confess  our  sins  one  to  another.  I  was 
taught  that,  as  it  would  be  very  inconvenient  for  us  to 
confess  to  the  general  public,  the  wisdom  of  the 
Church  had  appointed  certain  men  (to  wit,  priests)  to 
hear  confession.  Now,  I  am  bound  to  tell  you  that 
the  words  "Tell  it  to  the  Church"  are  not  found  in 
the  Corbey  Gospels  in  Paris  which  is  one  of  the  earli- 
est Latin  manuscripts.  The  Corbey  Gospels  know 
nothing  about  this  "Tell  it  to  the  Church";  and  the 
question  is.  When  our  Lord  was  speaking  where  was 
the  Church?  It  is  really  an  anachronism  to  repre- 
sent Jesus  Christ  as  saying  to  St.  Peter  and  St. 
John,  "Go  and  tell  it  to  the  Church."  Furthermore 
St.  James  in  a  Spanish  manuscript  of  his  Epistle, 
which  I  have  copied  at  Oxford  and  which  is  now  in 
the  press,  tells  us,  "Confess  your  sins  to  the  Lord," 
instead  of  "Confess  your  sins  to  one  another," — which, 
as  you  will  agree,  is  a  vastly  different  proposition. 

Again,  I  was  taught  a  very  high  sacramental  view 
of  the  Holy  Communion,  and  the  authority  for  this 
was  the  work  by  Dr.  Pusey  on  the  Real  Presence.  Dr. 
Pusey  summed  up  his  position  as  that  of  St.  Paul 
who  (so  he  declared)  regarded  the  Sacrament  as  "the 
Lord's  body."  When  I  came  to  examine  the  oldest 
Latin  manuscripts  I  found  out  that  instead  of  "not 
discerning  the  Lord's    body,"    the    words  were  "not 


11 


differentiating  the  substance,"  and  nothing  at  all  said 
in  the  text  about  "The  Lord's  body." 

Another  illustration,  and  this  will  be  my  last  illus- 
tration, although  I  could  give  you  many  more,  is 
from  the  Latin  copy  of  the  Gospels  I  have  mentioned, 
the  work  of  Irish  scribes.  In  the  beginning  of  St. 
Mark  we  read  that  St.  John  the  Baptist  was  in  the 
wilderness  "preaching  the  Baptism  of  Repentance 
for  the  remission  of  sins."  This  little  book  gives  us 
this  wonderful  statement,  "John  was  in  the  wilder- 
ness preaching  Repentance  for  the  Forgiveness  of 
Sin."  And  I  suggest  to  you  that  "preaching  Repent- 
ance for  the  Forgiveness  of  Sin"  is  considerably  diff- 
erent from  preaching  Baptism  for  the  Forgiveness  of 
Sin. 

You  will  say  to  me,  "Now  that  you  have  discovered 
textual  changes  made  in  one  direction,  tell  us  if  there 
is  anything  else,  tell  us  if  there  are  other  lines  of  recen- 
sion where  you  can  see  the  subjective  mind  at  work 
upon  the  primitive  records." 

The  personality  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is  clearly  shown 
in  the  earliest  form  of  the  Gospels  known  to  us,  the 
Old-Latin  form,  and  while  I  am  speaking  now  about 
this  earliest  form  I  may  just  say  that  I  know  there 
are  some  here,  I  have  met  some  people  already,  who 
say  to  me  "Were  not  the  Gospels  written  originally 
in  Greek?"  St.  Mark  I  believe  was  written  originally 
in  Latin.  I  cannot  set  forth  here  the  evidence,  but  I 
have  convinced  myself  that  St.  Mark  originally  ap- 
peared in  Latin,  although  I  dare  say  it  came  out  almost 
at  the  same  time  in  Greek.  We  know  it  was  written 
in  Rome,  in  Italy,  and  we  know  from  the  early  cata- 
combs that  the  Latin  and  Greek  characters  were  in- 
extricably intertwined.  In  the  second  century  we 
get  Latin  words  spelled  with  Greek  characters  and 
Greek  words  spelled  with  Latin  characters,  which  in 

12 


Rome  I  have  seen  with  my  own  eyes;  and  I  believe 
myself  that  the  Roman  Legionaries,  the  men  who 
served  under  Caesar  and  the  men  who  served  under 
Augustus,  did  not  speak  Greek,  I  believe  they  spoke 
in  Latin,  and  I  believe  that  St.  Mark — Marcus  is  a 
downright  Latin  name — I  believe  that  St.  Mark 
wrote  in  the  Latin  tongue  for  these  ordinary  people 
of  Roman  Italy. 

In  the  days  of  the  Apostles  there  was  frequent  com- 
merce between  Rome  and  Britain.  You  remember 
how  in  the  early  centuries  Roman  soldiers  constantly 
crossed  from  Gaul  and  Spain  into  Britain,  when  Spain, 
Gaul  and  Britain — Hispania,  Gallia,  Britannia,  all 
Roman  names — were  occupied  by  the  Roman  legions. 
Now,  these  Roman  soldiers  were  the  means,  or  the 
routes  which  they  took  were  the  means,  by  which  the 
Gospel  very  early  got  into  the  west  of  Europe  in  the 
Latin  form.  It  got  into  Spain;  it  got  into  France;  it 
got  into  Britain;  it  got  north  into  Scotland,  and 
finally  it  crossed  over  the  Irish  Sea,  sixty  miles  of 
rough  sea,  to  Ireland. 

This  Irish  text  differs  in  thousands  of  places  from 
the  Greek  form  and  the  so-called  Vulgate  form 
of  the  Latin  New  Testament  which  we  know  was 
stereotyped  in  the  year  382,  the  Vulgate  of  Jerome. 
But  the  year  382  is  far  too  late.  The  horse  was  out  of 
the  stable-door  by  that  time,  and  had  gone  some  way, 
had  galloped  "some"  by  that  time,  as  you  would  say 
in  this  country. 

At  any  rate  it  is  idle  to  attempt  to  make  us  believe 
that  the  form  of  Gospels  stereotyped  in  382  A.  D,,  can 
be  a  final  resting  place  for  any  thinking  man.  It  cannot. 
We  are  able  to  go  back,  to  go  behind  382,  and  are  able 
to  ask  ourselves  what  was  the  form  of  Gospels  which 
was  used  by  these  Roman  Legionaries,  and  which 
came  into  Spain  and  into  Gaul  in  the  second  century. 

13 


Can  we  reconstruct  that  Gospel?  Well,  it  is  very 
marvellous,  but  I  believe  that  we  can.  I  believe  that 
we  have  enough  Spanish  and  Irish  manuscripts  ex- 
tant in  different  fragments,  to  enable  us  to  recon- 
struct in  the  main  this  form  of  Gospels  which  was* 
used  in  Britain,  in  Gaul  and  in  Spain,  shall  I  say  be- 
tween the  years  122  when  the  Emperor  Hadrian  came 
in  and  the  year  180  or  170  when  Tatian  the  harmon- 
izer  consolidated  the  four  gospels  under  one  head? 

This  Irish  Text  is  in  Latin,  and  this  text  I  have 
now  for  the  last  six  or  seven  years  been  spending  my 
time  trying  to  recover ;  and  I  say  that  this  Latin-Irish 
text  or  Spanish  text  or  British  text — I  do  not  care 
what  you  call  it,  has  very  distinctive  elements  in  it; 
and  one  of  these  elements  is  that  it  has  a  great  many 
verses  which  speak  definitely  of  the  work  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.  Some  eight  or  ten  I  have  collected  already, 
which  are  suppressed  in  all  the  Greek  manuscripts 
and  suppressed  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Vulgate.  For 
example,  "No  man  can  come  unto  Me  except  the 
Father  draw  him,"  as  seen  in  the  Irish  text  is,  "No 
man  can  come  unto  Me  except  the  Father  and  the  Holy 
Spirit  draw  him,"  which  is  a  very  remarkable  verse. 

"Whose  soever  sins  ye  remit,  they  are  remitted,  and 
whose  soever  sins  ye  retain  they  are  retained."  Very 
well,  if  that  is  so  there  is  the  end  of  it.  But  what 
does  the  Irish  text  say,  "Whose  soever  sins  ye  shall  re- 
mit, it  is  the  Holy  Spirit  that  shall  remit  them,  and 
whose  soever  sins  ye  shall  retain,  it  is  the  Holy  Spirit 
that  shall  retain  them" — which  I  submit  to  you,  ladies 
and  gentlemen,  puts  that  verse  in  rather  a  new  light; 
and  we  are  not  quite  sure  now  that  we  have  got  the 
original  form  of  it. 

Then  again  you  will  remember  there  is  a  remark- 
able passage,  or  saying  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  in  St.  John's 
Gospel,  where  He  says:    "I  am  one  that  bear  witness 

14 


of  Myself  and  the  Father  that  hath  sent  Me  beareth 
witness  of  Me."  Now  the  Irish  text  reads,  "I  bear  wit- 
ness of  Myself,  and  the  Father  that  has  sent  Me 
beareth  witness  of  Me,  and  the  Holy  Spirit" — where 
you  have  once  more  very  definitely  a  claim  for  the 
work  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

Again  in  our  English  Bible  it  says,  "If  a  man  love 
Me  he  will  keep  My  word  and  My  father  will  love 
him,  and  We  will  come  to  him  and  make  Our  abode 
with  him,"  which  in  this  form  is  a  stupendous  say- 
ing. According  to  that,  Jesus  Christ  says  that  God  the 
Father  and  God  the  Son  will  come  to  a  man  and  make 
their  abode  with  this  one  man.  What  does  the  Irish 
text  say? — "If  a  man  love  Me  he  will  keep  My  word 
and  My  Father  will  love  him,  and  We  will  come  to 
him,  and  the  Holy  Spirit  will  make  with  him  a  dwell- 
ing place."  "Oh,  make  our  hearts  thy  dwelling 
place,"  has  been  the  age-long  Christian  prayer  to  the 
Holy  Spirit. 

I  can  illustrate  my  thesis  further  from  the  Epistles 
of  St.  Paul  in  the  Irish  text,  and  show  you  there  that 
St.  Paul  says,  "It  pleased  God  to  reveal  His  Son  in 
me  that  the  Holy  Spirit  might  preach  Him  among  the 
nations,"  whereas  the  Greek  text  and  the  Roman  Vul- 
gate text  say :  "It  pleased  God  to  reveal  His  Son  in  me 
that  I  might  preach  Him  among  the  nations."  Instead 
of  "I"  (the  apostle),  the  Irish  text  has  "the  Holy 
Spirit." 

Again  St.  Paul  says  to  the  Corinthians,  "When  ye 
are  met  together  and  my  spirit."  The  Irish  text  says, 
"When  ye  are  met  together  and  the  sanctifying  Spirit 
Himself,"  which  is  a  very  different  thing. 

Now,  I  have  just  mentioned  these  texts  which  come 
to  my  memory,  and  there  are  others,  to  show  you  that 
there  was  a  definite  purpose  in  the  minds  of  these  re- 
visers to  suppress  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  therefore  they 

15 


just  took  their  knife,  or  whatever  it  was,  and  cut  the 
words  out  of  the  original  documents — quite  easily 
done  in  those  early  days  when  men  like  Marcion 
lived ! 

Then  again  we  think,  for  example,  that  such  a  won- 
derful teaching  as  the  Lord's  Prayer  has  come  down 
to  us  absolutely  in  the  original  words  in  which  it  was 
given.  So  we  have  always  believed.  But  alas,  for  hu- 
man beliefs!  When  I  was  in  the  British  Museum  last 
April,  in  looking  at  the  copy  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  in  this 
Latin  Irish  manuscript,  I  saw  that  the  words  "Give  us 
this  day  our  daily  bread"  were  written  over  some  other 
words — I  saw  that  a  knife  had  been  taken,  something 
had  been  written  down  and  then  the  knife  of  the  copy- 
ist had  cancelled  the  words  written  and  put  something 
else  on  the  top  of  them.  I  have  now  been  for  seven- 
teen years  at  this  textual  work,  and  a  great  deal  of 
what  I  have  discovered  has  been  through  these  first 
readings  cancelled,  and  my  interest  was  at  once 
awakened.  I  thought  to  myself.  Now  I  am  on  the 
verge  of  some  extraordinary  discovery  probably;  I 
must  wait  for  a  bright  day,  and  I  must  read,  at  all 
cost,  what  is  written  underneath.  I  knew  that  I  could 
do  it  by  photography  if  not  by  my  unaided  eyes.  So 
I  came  to  the  Museum  after  a  day's  rest  on  one  of  our 
brightest  April  days  in  England  and  was  happy 
enough  to  read  what  was  originally  written.  What 
was  originally  written  was  this  in  Latin :  "Panem  ver- 
bum  Dei  celestem  da  nobis  hodie."  Give  us  today  for 
bread — Verbum  Dei — the  Word  of  God.  Give  us  to- 
day for  bread  the  Word  of  God,  and  then  it  goes  on, 
"Forgive  us  our  sins  .  .  .  " — Well,  I  looked  at  the 
Ms.  in  utter  astonishment.  I  thought,  Can  I  be  dream- 
ing? So  I  went  home.  I  thought  of  the  text  a  great 
deal,  and  I  said  to  myself,  "I  must  go  back  and  look  at 
the  Ms.  again;  perhaps  I  have  made  some  mistake." 

1« 


So  I  went  back,  and  I  looked  at  it  again,  and  there 
I  saw  quite  plainly  what  was  written  before  the  era- 
sure ;  and  I  have  not  a  shadow  of  a  doubt  of  it ;  and  I 
tell  you  what  the  scribe  put  on  the  vellum  first  was, 
"Give  us  today  for  bread  the  Word  of  God  from 
Heaven,"  which  makes  the  Lord's  Prayer  from  begin- 
ning to  end  a  prayer  for  spiritual  blessings.  Our 
Lord's  promise  is:  "Seek  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and 
all  other  things  shall  be  added  unto  you." 

I  hope  in  your  own  minds  you  are  gathering  up  what 
I  might  call  an  induction  from  all  these  separate  in- 
stances which  I  have  given  you  as  illustrations.  I  hope 
you  are  piecing  them  all  together,  and  are  reaching 
what  I  reached  in  my  mind  after  discoveries  extend- 
ing over  a  period  of  thirteen  or  fourteen  years.  I 
reached  the  conclusion,  I  was  forced  to  it,  that  not  even 
the  Lord's  Prayer  had  been  handed  down  in  such  a 
fixed  form  that  we  could  be  absolutely  certain  that  we 
had  the  words  as  they  left  the  lips  of  the  Master. 

I  am  going  to  give  you  two  little  parables,  two  of 
our  Lord's  parables.  One  is  the  parable  of  the  Prod- 
igal Son;  the  other  is  a  little  parable  added  to  the 
Lord's  Prayer  about  the  friend  who  came  to  his 
friend's  house  at  midnight,  and  asked  him  for  some 
bread. 

Now  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  which  has 
been  called  the  Parable  of  Parables,  begins:  "A  cer- 
tain man  had  two  sons ;  and  the  younger  of  them  said 
to  his  father,  Father  give  me  the  portion  of  the  goods 
that  falleth  to  me.  And  he  divided  unto  them  his  liv- 
ing. And  not  many  days  after  the  younger  son 
gathered  all  together,  and  took  his  journey  into  a  far 
country,  and  there  wasted  his  substance  with  riotous 
living."  The  Latin  is  "Viverido  luxuriose" — "luxurious 
living."    "And  when  he  had  spent  all,  there  arose  a 


17 


mighty  famine  in  that  land;  and  he  began  to  be  in 
want." 

The  word  "mighty"  is  not  found  in  the  oldest  man- 
uscripts. The  scribe  probably  thought  that  "a  mighty 
famine"  was  a  little  more  impressive  than  a  mere 
famine.  "He  began  to  be  in  want"  we  have  got,  but 
the  Old-Latin  gives  us  a  very  sweet  variation,  "he  be- 
gan to  be  hungry  and  to  be  in  want."  It  is  really  the 
hunger  which  is  the  great  thing. 

"And  he  went  and  joined  himself  to  a  citizen  of 
that  country."  Now,  I  have  always  had  a  suspicion 
that  that  word  "citizen,"  being  a  non-Jewish  word  and 
strictly  a  Roman  word,  somehow  got  in  there  through 
Jerome,  or  about  his  time,  and  so  we  find  in  the  Verona 
Gospels: — "He  went  and  flung  himself  before  a  man 
of  that  country."  He  went  and  flung  himself  before 
a  man  of  that  country  in  abject  despair  and  misery. 
He  flung  himself  down  at  his  feet,  and  implored  mercy 
— a  very  different  thing  from  joining  himself  to  a  cit- 
izen. "And  he  sent  him  into  his  fields  to  feed  swine. 
And  he  would  fain  have  filled  his  belly  with  the  husks 
that  the  swine  did  eat."  Some  of  our  revisers  have 
changed  that  into  what  is  not  the  oldest  text,  but  is 
found  in  Westcott  and  Hort's  text — "And  he  would 
fain  have  been  filled  with  the  husks  that  the  swine  did 
eat" — which  is  a  little  change  for  the  sake  of  supposed 
refinement. 

"And  no  man  gave  unto  him.  And  when  he  came 
to  himself,  he  said.  How  many  hired  servants  of  my 
father's  have  bread  enough  and  to  spare,  and  I  perish 
with  hunger!  I  will  arise  and  go  to  my  father,  and  I 
will  say  unto  him,  Father,  I  have  sinned  against 
heaven,  and  before  thee,  and  am  no  more  worthy  to 
be  called  thy  son."  That  is  what  our  English  Bible 
says  he  did  say  to  his  father,  but  you  will  see  that 
what  he  did  say  according  to  the  Irish  text  was  some- 

18 


thing  rather  different.  I  will  tell  you  presently  what 
he  did  say.  Meanwhile,  "And  he  arose  and  came  to  his 
father.  But  when  he  was  yet  a  great  way  off  his 
father  saw  him,"  and  the  Vulgate  adds  "and  had  com- 
passion." But  the  Old-Latin  omits  the  words  "And 
had  compassion."  The  old  scribe  forgot  that  the 
father  had  compassion  all  the  time,  and  therefore  by 
adding  that  when  he  saw  him  he  had  compassion 
he  virtually  denied  that  he  had  it  before,  or  im- 
plied that  having  lost  it,  he  must  needs  find  it  again, 
"He  saw  him  and  ran," — this  is  I  believe  the  orig- 
inal. "The  father  saw  him  and  ran  and  fell  on  his 
neck  and  kissed  him;  and  the  son  said  to  his 
father.  Sir,  I  have  sinned  against  heaven  and  be- 
fore thee  and  am  not  now  fit  to  be  thy  slave."  That 
is  what  the  Irish  text  tells  us  he  said.  What  our  Eng- 
lish Bible  states  he  said  is:  "Father,  I  have  sinned 
against  heaven,  and  in  thy  sight,  and  am  no  more 
worthy  to  be  called  thy  son,"  according  to  his  first  in- 
tention. 

Can  we  not  see  how,  in  the  presence  of  his  father's 
love,  without  a  word  said,  how  being  received  with  his 
father's  kiss,  he  feels  there  is  a  gulf  between  them ;  he 
had  forfeited  his  filial  relationship,  and  he  says,  "Sir — 
(Domine)  I  am  now  not  fit  to  be  thy  slave."  Notice 
how  wonderful  is  the  reply.  In  our  English  Bible  it 
says: 

"But  the  father  said  to  his  servants.  Bring  forth 
the  best  robe."  But  the  narrative  is  heightened  again 
in  the  Irish  form  of  text,  where  it  says,  "But  the 
father  said  to  his  servants,  Bring  forth  quickly  for 
my  son" — ^these  are  the  words  given  the  emphasis — 
"Bring  forth  quickly  for  my  son  that  best  robe  and  put 
it  on  him." 

The  son  says,  "I  am  not  fit  to  be  thy  slave."  But 
the  father  says:     "Bring  forth  quickly  for  my  son 

19 


the  best  robe  and  put  it  on  him."  You  see  how  im- 
measurable the  love  of  the  father  is  here  pictured, 
and  how  the  whole  of  the  love  proceeds  from  the 
father,  and  it  is  the  love  of  the  Father  which  strikes 
us  with  its  power  and  might  in  this  parable. 

The  rest  of  it  goes  on  as  in  our  Bible  until  we  come 
to  the  elder  brother.  Now  his  elder  brother  called  a 
servant  and  wanted  to  know  why  the  music  and  danc- 
ing were  proceeding.  I  suppose  he  thought  penance 
ought  first  to  have  been  exacted.  And  the  servant  said, 
"Thy  brother  is  come;  and  thy  father  hath  killed  a 
fatted  calf,  because  he  hath  received  him  safe  and 
sound."  And  he  was  angry,  and  would  not  go  in ;  there- 
fore came  his  father  out,  and  entreated  him.  And  he 
answering  said  to  his  father,  "Lo,  these  many  years 
do  I  serve  thee,  neither  transgressed  I  at  any  time  thy 
commandment ;  and  yet  thou  never  gavest  me  a  kid," — 
which  is  much  smaller,  we  all  know,  than  a  calf — "that 
I  might  make  merry  with  my  friends;  but  as  soon  as 
this  filius  diaboli,  as  soon  as  this  son  of  the  devil  came, 
thou  hast  killed  for  him  a  fatted  calf." 

Now,  I  ask  you  if  it  is  not  truer  to  human  nature, 
that  this  self-righteous  man  should  have  called  his 
brother  the  son  of  the  devil  than  that  he  should  have 
said,  "as  soon  as  this  thy  son" — our  Bible  says  "as 
soon  as  this  thy  son  was  come,  which  hath  devoured 
thy  living  with  harlots," — but  the  Irish  text  says,  and 
what  I  believe  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  said  was,  "as  soon 
as  this  son  of  the  devil  came,  who  has  wasted  thy  sub- 
stance with  fornicators,  thou  hast  killed  for  him  a 
fatted  calf."  "My  friends,"  the  elder  brother  implies, 
"are  highly  respectable  men;  his  friends,  this  son  of 
the  devil's,  are  all  men  of  utterly  immoral  life." 

The  time  is  gone.  I  must  pass  over  the  other  parable 
to-night  because  I  want  to  sum  up  for  two  or  three 
minutes  the  conclusions  I  have  reached.     I  wish  to 

20 


say  in  these  two  or  three  minutes  what  I  think  the  re- 
sult is.  New  light  has  shaken  us  forever  out  of  our 
complacency  that  we  have  got  absolutely  every  word 
of  the  Gospels  fixed.  We  have  still  a  search  to  make. 
There  are  thousands  of  documents  which  are  lying  in 
our  libraries  unpublished.  You  say  to  me,  Cannot 
they  be  published?  Yes,  they  can  be  published  if 
people  take  the  matter  to  heart.  But  you  know  that 
I  have  found  it  the  hardest  thing  to  interest  people  in 
England  in  this  subject.  Textual  criticism  is  caviare 
to  the  general.  People  say,  "I  have  got  the  Bible,  what 
more  do  I  want?  You  cannot  teach  me  anything  I  do 
not  know."  And  so  they  forget,  "The  little  more  and 
how  much  it  is,  and  the  little  less  and  what  worlds 
away." 

In  conclusion,  I  want  to  impress  upon  you  who  are 
strangers  to  me  as  I  am  a  stranger  to  you,  I  want 
to  impress  upon  you  that  what  has  come  to  me  after 
years  of  unsparing  work,  during  which  I  have  felt  this 
quest  simply  absorbing,  is  this  conviction — If  there  is 
any  new  light  to  be  got,  in  God's  Name  let  us  get  it.  To 
satisfy  our  own  mind,  to  satisfy  the  minds  of  other 
men,  we  must  have  the  ultimate  truth. 

A  man  said  to  me  recently  in  London.  "Sir,  you 
are  unsettling  people's  faith."  I  said,  "We  must  have 
the  truth,  no  matter  whose  faith  is  unsettles."  It  is 
no  good  building  upon  untruth  however  authoritative ; 
it  is  no  good  building  upon  foundations  which  will  not 
bear  the  strictest  scrutiny  and  examination.  It  is  no 
good  reposing  blindly  and  passively  upon  the  authority 
of  the  Church.  Who  is  the  Church,  and  what  author- 
ity does  she  possess  unless  she  is  in  line  with  the 
Truth?  We  must  have  truth  at  all  costs,  even  if  we 
should  discover  that  in  the  ultimate  Gospel  were  a 
good  many  things  which  give  no  support  to  certain 
long-accepted  forms  of  worship.  Cost  what  it  may,  let 


us  have  the  truth ;  let  us  have  the  primitive  Gospel 
which  v^^ill  unite  us  all  together  in  one  faith,  a  simpler 
faith,  a  faith  which  lays  the  stress  upon  the  inward 
life,  a  faith  which  sweeps  away  these  foolish  outward 
things  which  men  have  fought  for,  and  unites  us  in  a 
common  hope,  in  a  common  endeavor,  in  a  common  as- 
piration for  the  universal  good.  Men  are  becoming  too 
enlightened  to  quarrel  over  narrow  ecclesiastical  dis- 
tinctions ;  and  as  we  have  studied  more  deeply  we  find 
that  these  ecclesiastical  distinctions  have  for  the  most 
part  been  based  upon  texts  which  modern  investiga- 
tion shows  us  not  to  have  been  spoken  by  Christ  or 
written  by  His  Apostles. 


THE  CHAIRMAN :  We  have  been  led  into  a  large 
subject  by  an  unaccustomed  path.  We  are  grateful 
to  Mr.  Buchanan  for  all  new  facts  which  he  has 
brought  us,  and  we  hope  that  some  time  he  and  the 
rest  of  us  will  know  more  fully  all  the  facts  and  all 
the  opinions  to  be  drawn  from  them,  and  in  the  mean- 
time be  able  to  live  in  simple  confidence  by  the  truth 
we  have. 


DATE  DUE 

-immmSL 

!^ 

1 

1 

GAYLORD 

1^- 


■^ 


■^«e22 


